Bowe Bergdahl may face desertion charges

As reported on Tuesday, U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl will be charged with desertion for

disappearing from his base in Afghanistan in 2009. Bergdahl, who was released from captivity last

year in a controversial Taliban prisoner swap, could be charged within a week. The officer in charge of the case, General Mark Milley, is reviewing facts

and findings submitted by Army investigators last month and has not publicly said whether he will file

charges. Milley heads the Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based U.S. Forces Command. The soldier, who spent five years in captivity after leaving his

post, was released in May in exchange for five prisoners from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The deal was blasted by some Republicans,

and some of his fellow soldiers called him a deserter.

In Other NewsIn Other News The Pentagon has chosen Boeing's 747-8 to replace the two aging planes that serve as the President's Air

Force One fleet. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in a statement that the plane, one of Boeing's largest, is the only aircraft "manufactured in the United States [that] when fully missionized meets the necessary capabilities established to execute the presidential support mission, while reflecting the office of the President of the United States of America consistent with the national public interest.“ It will undertake the modifications necessary to make the plane ready for presidential flights, including the addition of sophisticated communication equipment and living quarters for the President and his staff. The two Boeing 747-200 planes that the President currently uses will reach the end of their 30-year service life in 2017, and according to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Air Force has set aside $1.65 billion between 2015 and 2019 for two replacement jets.

A fossilized human jawbone discovered by a Taiwanese fisherman, sold to an antique shop, then recovered by researchers may reveal a new kind of prehistoric man. The unlikely find could be nearly 200,000 years old and suggests a fourth type of ancient human who lived in Asia long before Homo sapiens ever came to be. Three other known archaic Asian hominids include Homo erectus, found in Java and China; the shorter Homo floresiensis from Indonesia; and Neanderthals in the Russian Altai mountains. Scientists believe that human jaws and teeth became smaller as they evolved. But unlike other fossils of the time, the newly discovered jawbone is thick with large molars, suggesting the existence of a different group. Researchers from Taiwan and Japan named the ancient human "Penghu 1," after the Penghu Channel where the fossil was found.

Tommy Thompson an ocean explorer, an entrepreneur, an author and a diver for sunken gold, was fascinated by the SS Central America, a side-wheeler steamship that sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1857. Officially a mail ship, it had left San Francisco flush with coins, bars, nuggets and dust just a few years after the California Gold Rush. In the 1980s, he began finding investors, and they fronted him funds, according to a report by Forbes Magazine. The report put his unconfirmed fundraising target at $55 million. He spent it on a team of scientists, engineers and crew, who sailed aboard a ship equipped with sonar and the robotic submarine, which they called Nemo. And Thompson hired historians, who documented the ship's history and artifacts. Years later, Nemo arrived at the ocean floor at the wreck of the Central America. In 1998, Thompson published photos of it and other artifacts in America's Lost Treasure, full of scholarly and technological details. He commissioned a documentary, Forbes wrote, and sought the attention of the media. In 2006, he disappeared. His stakeholders feared he had run away with their investments and with perhaps even more millions made from the sale of gold coins. On Wednesday, Marshals found Thompson and his girlfriend in a West Palm Beach hotel room.